The Torrance Family Travels Up The Mountain on Closing Day – Revisiting “The Shining” – Google Maps Redux Art

The above image is at the point when Kubrick crossfades from the Torrances driving to the vista of The Overlook.

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The Weeping Wall – Revisiting “The Shining” – Google Maps Redux Art

The Torrances are traveling west to east.

I had thought to pinpoint the opening waterfall shot as being at the Weeping Wall on the Going-to-the-Sun Road–before the Donner’s Pass conversation, and then not far after that the cross fade occurs (place of top shot) to the Timberline/Overlook. The day Google Maps went through there was road construction with a lot of dust and the sun glaring in their eyes–and viewing it all I can tell you that traveling with the sun in your eyes on the Going-to-the-sun-Road, with its challenging terrain, is not a road I would want to undertake with the sun blinding me.

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The Torrance Family Passes Through a Water Run-off Area – Revisiting “The Shining” – Google Maps Redux Art

But rather than passing the Weeping Wall (the highway there is ever under construction for repairs due constant water damage) they may instead be traveling a little further along in Google Map 4 below (and the above street view). The lack of trees on the right fits better, plus the Google maps aerial view of the road seems to be a perfect match with the helicopter view from the movie. Which you can’t tell from a ground shot.

The image I’ve grabbed of the beetle nearing the bend (at the point of the cross-fade to The Overlook) is about two Google maps arrow clicks further past the two parking areas to the right as back at that point the sunlight was too glaring to get much of anything.

What’s interesting about this is that the Torrances are traveling west to east on Closing Day and Kubrick chooses to crossfade away to the Timberline/Overlook before they come to Logan’s Pass, which is right about the Continental Divide, a little west of it. Whereas when Jack is traveling east to west in the opening shots, Kubrick chooses to crossfade away to the Timberline/Overlook before he reaches Logan Pass as well. So, these two versions of the same trip are converging on Logan Pass (perhaps a kind of stand-in for Donner’s Pass) and the Continental Divide.

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Juli Kearns

Juli Kearns is the author of Thunderbird and the Ball of Twine and Unending Wonders of a Subatomic World (or) In Search of the Great Penguin. She is also an artist/photographer, and the person behind the web alter of "Idyllopus Press".
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